An alien civilization bent on draining the planet’s resources. A post-apocalyptic Earth of the future. A pair of humans left behind to patrol the planet’s ruins. A quiet, unsettling feeling that everything isn’t what it appears to be.

If this sounds like science fiction movies you’ve seen before, it’s because Joseph Kosinski’s “Oblivion” borrows from much of it, in both story and style, classic and contemporary: “2001: A Space Odyssey,” “The Matrix,” the updated “Battlestar Galactica” TV series, “Prometheus,” and many more titles that I’m sure hard-core sci-fi fans could cite all the way through the end credits. But if you choose to view it as homage, and don’t look too hard for substantive meaning amid the messaging, Kosinksi (“Tron: Legacy”) does manage to rework these familiar slices into a twisty-turny piece of sci-fi escapism that mostly stands on its own.

Holding up a great deal of the weight is Tom Cruise, as yet another character named Jack. This time he’s a pilot and mechanic nearing the end of his mission on what’s left of Earth after humankind defeated an invading alien army with all-out nuclear war. Jack is stationed with his mission partner and lover, Victoria (Andrea Riseborough), and they’re both looking forward to returning to the off-planet colony that Earthlings must now call home. But first they must maintain the army of fierce, mindless drones programmed to destroy any lingering enemy forces that threaten one of the massive pieces of machinery being used to drain the planet’s water supply and convert it into energy for the human colony.

Impeccably groomed and donning clean, crisp garb — she in a light gray tailored dress a la Calvin Klein, and he in a perfectly smudged white pilot’s suit — and ensconced high above the wreckage in their sleek, swanky tower home, Jack and Victoria have an ethereal presence about them. Perhaps it’s because their memories have been wiped clean, a job requirement they’ve mostly accepted, except for the fact that Jack keeps having flashes of a life, and a woman (Olga Kurylenko), from before the war, now 60 years gone.

Jack zips around the sector in a transformable jet/helicopter/motorcycle so cool that I’m even hoping for an action figure, bringing damaged drones back to life. But he can’t shake the feeling that there’s something significant behind this nagging memory. When the validation Jack seeks literally falls out of the sky, the rules he’s been playing by are all off the table.

Perhaps the most impressive construction of this science fiction film, based on Kosinksi’s own comic book, is Cruise himself. The actor seems manufactured to inhabit roles such as this: an all-American flyboy with expert skills and enough of a rebel streak to second-guess authority. It’s impossible not to buy him in the role — it fits like your favorite old pair of jeans — even as you wonder when, if ever, he’ll show some age. The same goes for his love interests.

Unfortunately, it’s Jack’s romantic life with the woman in his mysterious flashbacks that yanks us out of a good sci-fi yarn and plops us into the land of superfluous Hollywood schlock. Andrea Riseborough’s brittle and beautiful-as-porcelain Victoria brings more than enough emotional string-pulling and intrigue for Jack to wrestle with. Kosinski should’ve just left it there.

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Spoilers await at every turn in “Oblivion,” but it feels safe to say that one of the key revelations is hinted at so strongly in the beginning that it can barely be called a secret. There are, however, quite a few unforeseeable plot twists that should keep your mind guessing and titillated throughout the film.

But once the puzzle pieces are carefully put in place by the film’s conclusion, it dawns on you that the bigger questions behind it all not only remain unanswered, they’re never even asked. Questions like “what does it this say about humanity?” are what make the heart of great science fiction beat. Ridley Scott’s “Prometheus” was riddled with such deep questions, but it left the puzzle pieces in total disarray. “Oblivion’s” screenwriters Kosinski, Karl Gajdusek and Michael Arndt took great effort to reassemble each fragment in its rightful place, but they didn’t seem to have much curiosity about how and why they got there in the first place.

Alison Gang is the U-T’s movie critic. Email her at alison@alisongang.com